Board geography
There are two conventions for giving directions:
- Absolute - when discussing moves or the relative position of individual stones:
- Up = towards the center
- Down = towards the edge
- Relative - when referring to positions on the board as a whole:
- Up or Top: Towards the white player
- Down, bottom, left, right, lower left etc.: Correspondingly - all as they appear to the Black player.[1]
- This convention can cause confusion with the previous one (or when abbreviated - see below). To avoid this, sometimes points of the compass are used instead, with "North" replacing "upper side".
Areas
The board is loosely divided into nine areas.
- abbreviations
- UL: upper left (corner or quarter) = NW
- TL: top left = NW
- UR: upper right = NE
- TR: top right = NE
- LL: lower left = SW
- BL: bottom left = SW
- LR: lower right = SE
- BR: bottom right = SE
- US: upper side = N side
- LS: lower side or left side (hence to be avoided) = S side or W side
- RS: right side = E side
Points on the Board
There are several ways to refer to points on the board:
- Absolute coordinates. A1 is the left closest corner point for black. T19 right farthest. Absolute coordinates have the form x99, where
- x = Horizontal, a roman character A through T, I is skipped.
- 99 = Vertical, one of the numbers 1 .. 19
- Relative coordinates are measured from the closest corner. They are written in the form x-y, x and y both ranging from 1 to 10. The first point discussed has the smallest number first. E.g. a stone on the 3-5 point might be followed by one on the 5-3 point.
- Named points: Some points have names, such as "hoshi".
Lines
The lines are points on the board with a certain distance from the border. We usually use
Height
- very low = second line (not first)
- no qualification = low = third line
- high = fourth line
- very high = fifth (not sixth)
- Know your lines
Distance[2], [3]
- contact = no space
- no qualification = close (approach) = small (enclosure) = one-space
- distant (approach) = large (enclosure) = two-space
- very distant = three-space
- pseudo = four spaces (or more?)
footnotes
[1] (Sebastian:) Is this really true? It seems like an impoliteness to the white player to accomodate the black player.
[2] The number of spaces refers to the horizontal distance, not the Manhattan distance. The Manhattan distance is used when talking about pace and the strength of connections.
[3] See also Joseki nomenclature - expert names
.